Are the Boomers cashing out? 6 6

[MisterX]

Huzzah!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/15-collectibles-that-are-now-probably-worthless/ss-BBDtZ5g?li=BBnb7Kz#image=8

 

[01TheDude]

33 minutes ago, BlowUpTheMoon said:

Starting a thread saying, "I read this online article..." then not posting a link to the article is

I don't mind that they didn't post the article at all since they also said it was click bait. I cannot stand it when I get duped into a click bait article-- so much garbage attached to those things, sometimes even stuff that messes with your computer.

So buyer beware on that above link. You got the gist of the article that sparked the conversation-- I doubt they have anything more in the link that we don't already have a better understanding of from simply reading this board. i.e click on it at your own risk-- I am avoiding it personally

[Martin Sinescu]

4 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I just feel bad for the guys getting into the hobby having to pay so much for what used to be such a cheap hobby to begin with. I collected comic books and records from an early age. Just to read and play. At a later stage of my life I quit buying comics and concentrated heavily on records. 5 years ago I got back into comic books after finding out that some of my books have gained tremendous value (among other reasons). None of my records did. Not even one.

It's relative. Coming into most hobbies at entry-level is daunting when you're on a limited budget. There were plenty of books that were already prohibitively expensive when I started collecting back issues in the late 80's (not even talking GA or early SA... many early Bronze keys were way out of my range). Then again, I was in my mid-to-late teens and had the buying power of a bag-boy. Same thing with baseball cards when I was younger and didn't have a job, just an allowance and birthday money. I've been pretty well priced out of '52 Mantles and AF 15's since the beginning. I make more now, they cost more now. 

What I'm curious about is if Boomers are really "Cashing Out" collections at this point. We're really only talking about 60's-70's here. Some are just recently retired or may even continue working past the normal retirement age. Is that really when you start dumping the hard work you put into a hobby? I would think some might even take retirement as a chance to devote more time to their passions. Also, I'm not sure too that many are dying off. Some, maybe, but I don't think it's an epidemic yet. Most should still have a comfortable 20-30 years left. 

[Aweandlorder]

2 minutes ago, Martin Sinescu said:

It's relative. Coming into most hobbies at entry-level is daunting when you're on a limited budget. There were plenty of books that were already prohibitively expensive when I started collecting back issues in the late 80's (not even talking GA or early SA... many early Bronze keys were way out of my range). Then again, I was in my mid-to-late teens and had the buying power of a bag-boy. Same thing with baseball cards when I was younger and didn't have a job, just an allowance and birthday money. I've been pretty well priced out of '52 Mantles and AF 15's since the beginning. I make more now, they cost more now. 

What I'm curious about is if Boomers are really "Cashing Out" collections at this point. We're really only talking about 60's-70's here. Some are just recently retired or may even continue working past the normal retirement age. Is that really when you start dumping the hard work you put into a hobby? I would think some might even take retirement as a chance to devote more time to their passions. Also, I'm not sure too that many are dying off. Some, maybe, but I don't think it's an epidemic yet. Most should still have a comfortable 20-30 years left. 

I was merely talking about buying new books/records from off the shelf. Not about secondary market value. 

A comic would cost 60 cents to a dollar in the 80s whereas records would be 5.00-10.00 dollar each (with most being the latter)

[Aweandlorder]

33 minutes ago, MisterX said:

Huzzah!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/15-collectibles-that-are-now-probably-worthless/ss-BBDtZ5g?li=BBnb7Kz#image=8

 

And why didn't you provide a quote of the article???

 

[Mr. Zipper]

9 minutes ago, Martin Sinescu said:

What I'm curious about is if Boomers are really "Cashing Out" collections at this point. We're really only talking about 60's-70's here. Some are just recently retired or may even continue working past the normal retirement age. Is that really when you start dumping the hard work you put into a hobby?

I suppose there are some who will hold 'till the bitter end, but I think most people get to a certain point and it's about not wanting all the "stuff" around the house and dealing with the requisite care. That time typically comes well before they are in very old age.

I'm in my late 40s, and believe me, I'm already thinking, "Do I want to be dealing with all these long boxes in 10 or 15 years?" 

Five - ten years ago, those kind of thoughts didn't even cross my mind.

 

[01TheDude]

14 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

And why didn't you provide a quote of the article???

 

 

Quote

COMIC BOOKS

Unless you've dug into a stash of comics and uncovered ultra-rare issues from the earliest days of Superman, Batman, or the classic Marvel heroes, you're likely holding onto a pile of childhood memories, and nothing more. As baby boomers age, they are paring down and trying to cash in, and the market for comics is glutted. Condition, as with so many collectibles, is key too. A random check of price guides and online marketplaces might prove eye-opening, to say the least.

 

FYI -- it is only one slide that is comics related apparently and this is the text for it with some random picture of some mostly modern books behind it. no need to click.

Edited August 26, 2017 by 01TheDude

[Aweandlorder]

1 minute ago, 01TheDude said:

 

FYI -- it only one slide apparently and this is the text for it with some random picture of some mostly modern books behind it. no need to click.

Many thanks for this ??

[Martin Sinescu]

2 minutes ago, Mr. Zipper said:

I suppose there are some who will hold 'till the bitter end, but I think most people get to a certain point and it's about not wanting all the "stuff" around the house and dealing with the requisite care. That time typically comes well before they are in very old age.

I'm in my late 40s, and believe me, I'm already thinking, "Do I want to be dealing with all these long boxes in 10 or 15 years?" 

Five - ten years ago, those kind of thoughts didn't even cross my mind.

 

I agree, I'm in the same place except early 40's. Having watched two grandparents downsize and ultimately move out of their respective houses was a bit of a revelation. Many things I assumed had sentimental value they were eager to get rid of just to shed as much weight as possible. Definitely helps counteract the desire to fill my house with useless baubles and furniture.

15 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I was merely talking about buying new books/records from off the shelf. Not about secondary market value. 

A comic would cost 60 cents to a dollar in the 80s whereas records would be 5.00-10.00 dollar each (with most being the latter)

Gotcha, I considered that might have been what you meant as I wrote it. At the same time, I wonder how the cost of a comic in the 80's relative to average salary or minimum wage at the time compares with today's rates for each. I'd have to defer to our resident number-crunchers as I'm not good with stats.

[Robot Man]

49 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I just feel bad for the guys getting into the hobby having to pay so much for what used to be such a cheap hobby to begin with. I collected comic books and records from an early age. Just to read and play. At a later stage of my life I quit buying comics and concentrated heavily on records. 5 years ago I got back into comic books after finding out that some of my books have gained tremendous value (among other reasons). None of my records did. Not even one.

I bought records for the music. At one time I started seriously collecting them. Most have not gone up much in value. Except the early blues and hillbilly 78's. Some of those bring nosebleed prices. Many are nearly one of a kind. People that collect those are VERY passionate and weird collectors. A great read that I highly recommend is "Not for sale at any price" available on Amazon cheap. A fascinating and great read. Not a long book but full of stories and info. These collectors are off the hook as to what the did to get rare 78's. Check it out!

[Gatsby77]

1 hour ago, MisterX said:

Huzzah!

http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/15-collectibles-that-are-now-probably-worthless/ss-BBDtZ5g?li=BBnb7Kz#image=8

 

Interesting - the photo of the comics doesn't show one older than 20 years old.

And yeah -- 99 percent of the comics from the last 40 years (1977-present) are basically worthless, either because they're not keys or they're in VF or worse shape.

But about those baby boomers?

Sure - my uncle is now in his mid-70s. Three years ago he asked me to sell his childhood comic book collection - about 400 original owner books from the early 1950s.

I haven't sold them yet because they're generally not worth listing.

1) They're pre-Marvel

2) 98 percent non-superhero.

3) Average condition is 3.5 -- some as high as 5.0. Most are structurally 4.0 but might have issues of tanning or brittleness that make them 2.0s.

So I'm now sitting on a closetful of Golden Age books that are worth no more than $10 each. Out of the 400, maybe 6 are worth $80 or more (solid 5.0 issues of Mad 24, 25, Tales to Astonish # 1, a few others).

But meanwhile it's piles of books like the Lone Ranger, Little Lulu, Lassie, Our Army at War (pre Sgt. Rock).

Honestly the most valuable ones are a few dozen sub- # 100 Archie comics.

My other uncle (same family, a few years older) has a similiar collection, but it's just a few dozen books from the late-1940s. Mostly Wings and other war books. Literally the only superhero one in the bunch is a Blue Beetle.

Just funny -- for non-collector baby boomers who may still have a random pile of original owner comics in their basement as they now look to retirement, we've passed the generation who was collecting in the late 30s/early 40s and are now looking at those who were kids in the late 1940s/early 1950s -- when superheroes were least popular and therefore least likely to be present.

In another 10-12 years, we'll begin to see the retirements of those who grew up on early Marvel superheroes.

 

[Senormac]

this thread is the best read on the boards right now.,.....

cept for those others ones I haven't found yet

 

[NoMan]

2 hours ago, Robot Man said:

I bought records for the music. At one time I started seriously collecting them. Most have not gone up much in value. Except the early blues and hillbilly 78's. Some of those bring nosebleed prices. Many are nearly one of a kind. People that collect those are VERY passionate and weird collectors. A great read that I highly recommend is "Not for sale at any price" available on Amazon cheap. A fascinating and great read. Not a long book but full of stories and info. These collectors are off the hook as to what the did to get rare 78's. Check it out!

i forgot that book! Saw it and wanted to read it. Thanks

 

[Aweandlorder]

1 hour ago, Robot Man said:

I bought records for the music. At one time I started seriously collecting them. Most have not gone up much in value. Except the early blues and hillbilly 78's. Some of those bring nosebleed prices. Many are nearly one of a kind. People that collect those are VERY passionate and weird collectors. A great read that I highly recommend is "Not for sale at any price" available on Amazon cheap. A fascinating and great read. Not a long book but full of stories and info. These collectors are off the hook as to what the did to get rare 78's. Check it out!

I was DJing professionally from the 90s till last year really. I bought mainly LPs in the 80s just to play, and 12" singles when I took my hobby seriously, again, just to play, not collect. I remember in the late 90s early 00s blowing all my money on records. I played mainly dance & Hip Hop and later Electronica (what they loosely refer to as EDM nowadays) as thats what most clubs/bars would cater to. There were also record pools I joined which were going for more money than what a subscription of a whole line of books from one publisher will cost you. The way I saw it was, I made that money back (and then some) from gigs. But all these records had no value. I had a tremendous amount of records that were limited editions, promos, even some test pressings. Zilch.

This is ABSOLUTELY not to say that records make for horrible collectibles. But merely to illustrate how comic books, which I paid very little for at the time (mainly late 70s to 80s, by the 90s I ditched) which I collected mostly for reading, ended up being a FAR FAAAAAR better investment at a FRACTION of the cost, than records.

And youre absolutely right, I had many of those "weird" friends who actually collected records, did not dare play them out, went after the avant garde, imports, treasured each one and treated them better than their pets. I dont recall anyone calling them "speculators" or "investors" at the time. Just "Vinyl Nerds". How is it that they dont get the same treatment that comic book collectors who dont read books and buy them for the same reasons do, is beyond me

[ComicConnoisseur]

2 hours ago, Robot Man said:

I bought records for the music. At one time I started seriously collecting them. Most have not gone up much in value. Except the early blues and hillbilly 78's. Some of those bring nosebleed prices. Many are nearly one of a kind. People that collect those are VERY passionate and weird collectors. A great read that I highly recommend is "Not for sale at any price" available on Amazon cheap. A fascinating and great read. Not a long book but full of stories and info. These collectors are off the hook as to what the did to get rare 78's. Check it out!

Thanks for the recommendation. I am going to check that out. Sounds good.

Quick review from Amazon.

 

Before MP3s, CDs, and cassette tapes, even before LPs or 45s, the world listened to music on fragile, 10-inch shellac discs that spun at 78 revolutions per minute. While vinyl has enjoyed a renaissance in recent years, rare and noteworthy 78rpm records are exponentially harder to come by. The most sought-after sides now command tens of thousands of dollars, when they’re found at all.

Do Not Sell at Any Price is the untold story of a fixated coterie of record collectors working to ensure those songs aren’t lost forever. Music critic and author Amanda Petrusich considers the particular world of the 78—from its heyday to its near extinction—and examines how a cabal of competitive, quirky individuals have been frantically lining their shelves with some of the rarest records in the world.

Edited August 26, 2017 by ComicConnoisseur

[Von Cichlid]

13 minutes ago, Aweandlorder said:

I was DJing professionally from the 90s till last year really. I bought mainly LPs in the 80s just to play, and 12" singles when I took my hobby seriously, again, just to play, not collect. I remember in the late 90s early 00s blowing all my money on records. I played mainly dance & Hip Hop and later Electronica (what they loosely refer to as EDM nowadays) as thats what most clubs/bars would cater to. There were also record pools I joined which were going for more money than what a subscription of a whole line of books from one publisher will cost you. The way I saw it was, I made that money back (and then some) from gigs. But all these records had no value. I had a tremendous amount of records that were limited editions, promos, even some test pressings. Zilch.

This is ABSOLUTELY not to say that records make for horrible collectibles. But merely to illustrate how comic books, which I paid very little for at the time (mainly late 70s to 80s, by the 90s I ditched) which I collected mostly for reading, ended up being a FAR FAAAAAR better investment at a FRACTION of the cost, than records.

And youre absolutely right, I had many of those "weird" friends who actually collected records, did not dare play them out, went after the avant garde, imports, treasured each one and treated them better than their pets. I dont recall anyone calling them "speculators" or "investors" at the time. Just "Vinyl Nerds". How is it that they dont get the same treatment that comic book collectors who dont read books and buy them for the same reasons do, is beyond me

I spent those same years buying up thrash, death, and black metal CD's, records, and cassettes, much of my collection being from the late 80's to the mid nineties.  As a matter of fact, music is what I focused on when I finally stopped buying comics the first time around '94 or so.  Buying SA and BA keys with that money would have been the better investment for sure*, but I am happy to say that I could easily sell the majority of my metal albums for multiples of what I paid for them initially.  Although comics have a much larger fanbase, many of the early extreme metal albums I have are very rare and exceedingly hard to come by.  We are talking albums where a few thousand copies were the most that were made.  MP3's and youtube downloading have hurt their value for sure, but luckily many metalheads still place value on album artwork and owning the physical product. 

 

*For comparison, I bought an ASM 129 and IH 181 in 1999 (around the nadir of the comic industry) for 350 dollars total in about 7.5 condition each.    

[porcupine48]

1 minute ago, Von Cichlid said:

I spent those same years buying up thrash, death, and black metal CD's, records, and cassettes, much of my collection being from the late 80's to the mid nineties.  As a matter of fact, music is what I focused on when I finally stopped buying comics the first time around '94 or so.  Buying SA and BA keys with that money would have been the better investment for sure*, but I am happy to say that I could easily sell the majority of my metal albums for multiples of what I paid for them initially.  Although comics have a much larger fanbase, many of the early extreme metal albums I have are very rare and exceedingly hard to come by.  We are talking albums where a few thousand copies were the most that were made.  MP3's and youtube downloading have hurt their value for sure, but luckily many metalheads still place value on album artwork and owning the physical product. 

 

*For comparison, I bought an ASM 129 and IH 181 in 1999 (around the nadir of the comic industry) for 350 dollars total in about 7.5 condition each.    

Yep,my early Bonzai pressings have went through the roof in value,and there is a very healthy market for cassettes demos and such.A lot of the early punk singles I found binning twenty years ago are just silly in price now.

[FineCollector]

3 hours ago, Mr. Zipper said:

I suppose there are some who will hold 'till the bitter end, but I think most people get to a certain point and it's about not wanting all the "stuff" around the house and dealing with the requisite care. That time typically comes well before they are in very old age.

I'm in my late 40s, and believe me, I'm already thinking, "Do I want to be dealing with all these long boxes in 10 or 15 years?" 

Five - ten years ago, those kind of thoughts didn't even cross my mind.

 

Sorting longboxes is the only exercise I get anymore!  If I didn't have those, I'd have to... go outside... or something!

[Aweandlorder]

Of course. This is not a records vs comics debate. This is just to draw an example from my own experience and to demonstrate how much money is spent on records as opposed to comics

I have had thousands of Pop, Hip Hop, New Wave, Punk, Freestyle (sigh, sorry Im from NY), House, Techno Trance... Tons...

The weird thing about records is this.. The absolutely rarest stuff I ever owned was in the electronica genre, stuff youd never heard about. The pressings were hundreds, probably less at times. I knew the guys and girls from the distribution lines (Downtown 161, groovejet, etc) I'd get the first copies off of them before theyd sell out at the stores. None of these ever picked value, although they were big hits at the clubs. Huge!

Even when I finally decided to sell my collection, mainly because they occupied so much space. I had advertised on craigslist for OVER A YEAR and had very few bites. The ones that came over, looked, said they loved what they saw but didnt buy. Finally I had a guy that actually collected comic books and offered me cash with a trade for some amazing books. I got 800$ plus early graded and signed ASMs, FFs and DDs plus a few thousands Bronze/Copper books

My dad's records (I want my daddy's records!!) were of great value. Most classic rock and Motown. But were talking 60s-70s

 

[Von Cichlid]

18 minutes ago, porcupine48 said:

Yep,my early Bonzai pressings have went through the roof in value,and there is a very healthy market for cassettes demos and such.A lot of the early punk singles I found binning twenty years ago are just silly in price now.

 I still have an Anthrax "Fistful of Metal" record from that label with the 3.99 price tag still on it.  Got it at a place called Musik Hut (which specialized in metal / extreme metal) in Fayetteville NC.  I was in the Army at the time and every payday I would take 25% of my earnings (I lived in the barracks so I had no expenses)  and buy CD's, cassettes, and albums.  The CD's were all new so they were still $15 or so, but the LP's and cassettes were $2 to $6 for the most part, and we are talking good, now vintage, albums here.  I bought a lot of it, but still I wish I had a time machine so I could go back and see what I may have overlooked.

It's funny because at this time (mid to late nineties), the metal scene was totally dead here in the US, and many, many good albums (mainly form the European scene) could be had for dirt cheap prices.